


Nothing Can Touch Me

by natacup82



Series: They Weren't There [2]
Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Community: hc_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 07:36:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natacup82/pseuds/natacup82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having someone to talk to doesn't make Sarah's hallucinations go away. To get a good night's sleep sometimes she needs a little more. For  prompt: substance abuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Can Touch Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion/sequel to [Too Dark, Too Bright](http://archiveofourown.org/works/168633).

The thing most people neglect to say about problems is that talking about them isn’t enough for everyone.

Sarah keeps a standing appointment to meet up with Ellison to talk about the things, the people they’ve been seeing. The usually meet at something after three am for a talk with a side of pie.

Sometimes it helps her, sometimes she won’t see dead people in her house or on the street for weeks at a time.

And then. One day she’ll come home and Derek will be in the kitchen again, blood slowly trickling from the hole in his forehead and pooling on the table.

It’s a little different now, they don’t talk back anymore, but that’s almost worse. Them sitting there silently dying over and over again.

*  
Sarah thinks about telling Ellison that talking isn’t helping, that’s it’s useless but it seems to be helping _him_. Following her trail has caused enough trouble for him that she’s not willing to take that away.

The day Sarah comes home to see her mother lying on the floor screaming for help, her body jerking back as it’s hit over and over again by bullets she refuses to leave.

Sarah wasn’t there when her mom died, she doesn’t know if she saw it coming or if she suffered. She doesn’t even know where she’s buried so she stays because this is the first time she’s seen her mother in sixteen years and it’s almost, almost better than nothing.

Sarah spends that night crying. And drinking. She doesn’t think too hard about it, just goes to the cabinet pulls out a bottle and pours a drink. Then another, and another until she isn’t feeling much of anything.

That night she manages to sleep through the night without nightmares. It’s the best night sleep she’s had years.

It’s wonderful.

*  
It becomes a habit.

There are no terminators coming for her, not with John stuck somewhere in the future. But the guilt and regret are there sharper than ever before, and the hallucinations are more frequent.  
So Sarah drinks, every night until she falls into another dreamless sleep.

She still meets up with Ellison once a week, still tells him about all of the dead people haunting her path but she doesn’t tell him about the drinking.

He’d judge her or offer up some lip service to the power of talking about it which is exactly what Sarah doesn’t need.

She’s found what works for her and that’s enough. If sometimes she starts drinking before she’s seen anything, before there’s been an instant replay of another person she loved dying horribly, it’s fine, it works for her.

*

It’s a few months before it stops working as well, before she needs to drink more and more just to get a few hours of dreamless sleep before the nightmares come back, before the hallucinations get worse.

Sarah ignores it as much as she can, finds harder liquor with higher proofs, things she couldn’t handle back when she was young and prone to actually going out but it still doesn’t help.

One night, on the way to meet Ellison for their weekly meeting she almost gets pulled for swerving.

Sarah makes her excuses, says, “I work late and I’m just exhausted. I think maybe I’m going to pull over for a bit and shut my eyes,” and hopes the cop takes it at that. She’d had a couple of shots before leaving the house, just to steady her nerves and wipe away the scene of Kyle dying from the living room.

Sarah gets lucky when something else, something violent and dangerous, something that a few months earlier would have probably been related to John and Cameron comes over the radio and the cop lets her off with a, “go home and get some sleep ma’am,” without even checking her ID.

Sarah smiles and says, “Will do officer, thank you,” and drives off letting out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

When she gets to the diner, she doesn’t waste any time, she just sits down and says, “I’ve been drinking to get some sleep. It’s becoming a problem.”

And Ellison doesn’t judge her, doesn’t tell her she’s wrong or that she’s a bad person.

He just sits there and listens, and says, “You know for a while, I had this prescription for pain killers. The pain stopped but I still needed the pills because they were the only way I could sleep at all.”

Talking is still not enough to get Sarah through the days and nights but at least here, now she knows she’s not alone.


End file.
